Trump Wants It Known: Grading 100 Days Is ‘Ridiculous’ (but His Were the Best)

WASHINGTON — In case anyone was wondering, President Trump wants it known that he does not care about the false judgment of his administration after just 100 days. “It’s an artificial barrier,” he sniffed the other day. “Not very meaningful,” he scoffed. A “ridiculous standard,” he added on Twitter.

So how is Mr. Trump spending his final week before the artificial and ridiculous 100-day point of his presidency? With a flurry of action on health care, taxes and the border wall to show just how much he has done in the first 100 days — amplified by a White House program of first-100-days briefings, first-100-days receptions, a first-100-days website and a first-100-days rally.

It may not be meaningful, but Mr. Trump has invested quite a lot of meaning in the 100-day grading period, deeply anxious that he be judged a success at this early stage. And not just a success, but one with plenty of superlatives: the most successful president with the most executive orders and bills signed and the best relationships with foreign leaders and the most action taken by any president ever in the first 100 days. Even though it’s an artificial barrier.

“As with so much else, Trump is a study in inconsistency,” said Robert Dallek, the presidential historian. “One minute he says his 100 days have been the best of any president, and the next minute he decries the idea of measuring a president by the 100 days.”

And lest anyone say otherwise, Mr. Trump has already told supporters not to believe contrary assessments, anticipating more critical evaluations by journalists, not to mention partisan attacks by Democrats. “No administration has accomplished more in the first 90 days,” Mr. Trump boasted in Wisconsin last week, not waiting for the final 10 days to grade himself.

He has signed a spate of executive orders — 25 are listed on the White House website — numerically surpassing most modern presidents, depending on how they are counted. But some of them are more aspirational: One, for instance, ordered a study on steel dumping without actually taking action on steel dumping yet.

Likewise, he has signed 28 bills into law, according to the White House, the most of any president in nearly seven decades. Some of them were aimed at unraveling regulations enacted late in Mr. Obama’s presidency in areas like teacher preparation, land management and federal procurement. Others were less weighty, like one officially naming a veterans’ health center in Butler County, Pa., the “Abie Abraham V.A. Clinic.”

Many of the more high-profile promises he made on the campaign trail are stalled or incomplete, like building a border wall, renegotiating or scrapping the North American Free Trade Agreement, temporarily barring visitors from predominantly Muslim countries and revamping health care. Moreover, he has done nothing to build public support, and his approval ratings are still hovering around 40 percent, far lower than any other modern president at this point in his tenure.

To the extent that he is being held to a measurement he disdains, he has no one to blame but himself. In October, he issued a “Contract With the American Voter,” which he called “my 100-day action plan to Make America Great Again.” He has begun many of the executive actions he promised in that plan. But of the 10 major pieces of legislation whose passage he vowed to fight for “within the first 100 days,” only one has even been introduced.

“None have been passed — not a single one — and nine haven’t even been sent to the Congress,” said Ronald A. Klain, who was a top White House aide under Mr. Obama and President Bill Clinton. “If Trump finds himself hoisted on the 100-day test, it is a petard that he erected for himself.”

Asked about the 100-day plan by The Associated Press last Friday, Mr. Trump brushed it off, saying, “Somebody put out the concept of a 100-day plan.” He seemed to have forgotten that he personally recorded a video during the transition repeating the 100-day promises.

“We feel very proud of what we’ve been able to accomplish and fulfill the promises that he made to the American people,” Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, said. “But I think it’s got to be kept in context.” The context, he added, “is it’s 100 days, and you’ve got four years in your first term and eight years for two terms.”

Asked why the White House was making such a production if it was an artificial measure, Mr. Spicer said it was an inevitable concession to the reality that every news organization is busily preparing an assessment.

The fixation with the first 100 days traces its history back to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who took office in the Great Depression and passed 15 major pieces of legislation in short order. Ever since, presidents have bristled at what they considered an impossible standard.

“It is hard to judge any of these other presidents after that, and I think all of them are cursing the idea that this got started,” said Doris Kearns Goodwin, author of “No Ordinary Time,” a book about Roosevelt. “That’s the one thing they might all agree on, the post-F.D.R. presidents: ‘No way; this isn’t fair.’”

John F. Kennedy tried to reset expectations on his Inauguration Day when he proclaimed, “All this will not be finished in the first 100 days, nor will it be finished in the first 1,000 days.” Mr. Obama echoed this argument on the night he was elected, saying, “We may not get there in one year or even one term.”

Aides to President George W. Bush argued that he should be given extra time because his transition was cut short by the Florida recount. But, failing to convince anyone of that, he ended up inviting members of Congress to the White House to “celebrate our 100 days of working together.” Mr. Obama resisted what his senior adviser, David Axelrod, called “a Hallmark holiday,” but he had passed the largest economic stimulus package in history by that point and ended up holding a town-hall-style meeting and prime-time news conference.

To be sure, the first 100 days of the Bush and Clinton presidencies bore only a modest resemblance to the rest of their tenures. Less important than a scorecard of accomplishments, Ms. Goodwin said, is the leadership style demonstrated in the early days.

Jonathan Alter, author of “The Defining Moment: F.D.R.’s Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope,” said Mr. Trump did not come close to any modern president in meaningful accomplishments so far. But he agreed that the first 100 days tell only part of the story.

“I don’t think the first 100 days are by themselves that important,” he said. “The first year is critically important, and the first 100 days set the tone for the first year.”